Chapter VII From the United Nations Charter: Actions with respect to threat of the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression:-

Author: Nazar Babiker El-Siddig Mustafa Hamad ( LL.B) – Attorney at law

The Charter of the United Nations was signed on the 26th of June 1945, in San-Francisco, at the conclusion of the United Nations conference on international organization, and came into force on the 24th October 1945.
One of the main purposes of the United Nations charter is keeping the peace and the protection of all countries in the world without discrimination.The Security Council is made of five permanent members and ten temporary members, while the decisions are made by the majority.If we compare between the League of Nations and the United Nations we will find in case of the U.N. as said the decisions are made by the majority while in the league the decisions were made by the acceptance of all the members. In this, the U.N. is superior to the League of Nations.And if we compare between the main purposes we will find that the League of Nations failed to stop wars and the birth of the Second World War.But if we looked in chapter VII from the charter of the United Nations we will find that the U.N. has the Right to use force to make peace and security for the world. Of course, before using force there are peaceful options that may be used. Only if they are not effective can force be used.
Some of these ways are:-
1. Seeking a solution through negotiation
2. Engaging
3. Mediation
4. Concilation
5. Arbitration
6. Judical settlement
Once all those solutions fail, the Security Council will move on to the next mission and will decide that what has happened is a breach of the peace or threat to the peace or is an act of aggression. After the Security Council decides the case they will choose the suitable measure for the situation. The Security Council will present the recommendations to the specific parties or it will proceed with article 39 of the U.N charter [The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or acts of aggression, and make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42 to maintain or restore international peace and security]. Under those chapters there are two types of punishment. The first is:-
a) Non military. And article 41 from the charter discusses them. [The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio and other means of communication and the severance of diplomatic relation.
From the article we can find all of the following:-
Complete or partial interruption of
1) Economic relations
2) Rail
3) Sea
4) Air
5) Postal
6) Telegraphic
7) Radio
Other means of communications
9) and the complete severance of diplomatic relations

If all those measures were not effective, the second option for the Security Council is to use forces.
b) Military. These are discussed in article 42. [Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such actions by air, sea or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security? Such actions may include demonstrations, blockade and other operations by air, sea or land forces of members of the United Nations.]
This article gave the United Nations the right to use air sea or land forces to maintain or to restore international peace and security. From this we will understand that the united nations have the right to use anything to stop the breach or threats of the peace.And if we looked at article 43 and its three subsections we will find the following:-
Subsection 1: all members of the United Nations, in order to contribute to the maintenance of the international peace and security, undertake to make available to the Security Council, on its call and in accordance with a special agreement or agreements, armed forces, assistance, and facilities, including rite of passage, necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security.Subsection 2: such agreement or agreements shall govern the numbers and types of forces. Their degree of readiness and general location and the nature of the facilities and assistance to be provided.Subsection 3: the agreement or agreements shall be negotiated as soon as possible on the initiative of the Security Council. They shall be concluded between the Security Council and members or between the Security Council and groups of members and shall be subject to ratification by the signatory states in accordance with their respective constitutional processes. This article speaks about the contribution of the members of the U.N. to maintain the international peace and security and that by giving to the U.N. the armed forces and assistance and facilities including rites of passage. The article speaks about the number and the types of forces and the general locations of the assistance that can be provided and also these agreements must be negotiated by the U.N. Security Council and members and Security Council and group members as soon as possible.If we go to article 46 we will find that [plans for the application of armed force shall be made by the Security Council with the assistance of the military staff committee.]

We see that the article states that the plans of using force must be done by the assistance of the military staff committee.
Article 47 is divided into four subsections:-
Subsection 1) there shall be established a military staff committee to advice and assist the security council in all questions relating to the security council’s military requirements for the maintenance of the international peace and security, the employment and command of forces placed at its disposal, the regulation of armaments, and possible disarmament .Subsection 2) the military staff committee shall consist of the chiefs of staff of the permanent members of the Security Council or their representatives. Any member of the United Nations not permanently represented on the committee shall be invited by the committee to be associated with it when the efficient discharge of the committee’s responsibilities requires the participation of that member in its work.
Subsection 3) the military staff committee shall be responsible under the Security Council for the strategic direction of any armed forces placed at the disposal of the Security Council. Questions relating to the command of such forces shall be worked out subsequently.
Subsection 4) the military staff committee, with the authorization of the Security Council and after consultation with appropriate regional agencies, may establish regional subcommittees.
Article 47 speaks in subsection 1 about the mission of the military staff committee and it is to give the advice and to assist the Security Council. And subsection 2 speaks about how the military committee will be formed. And subsections 3 speak about the strategic direction of any armed forces placed at its disposal. And subsection 4 about the establishment of the regional agencies.
Article 48 has two subsections:-
Subsection 1) the action required to carry out the decisions of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security shall be taken by all the members of the United Nations or by some of them, as the Security Council may determine.
Subsection 2) such decisions shall be carried out by the members of the United Nations directly and through their action in the appropriate international agencies of which they are members.
Article 48, Subsection 1 speaks about which members of the United Nations shall carry out the actions required. Subsection 2 speaks about the methods by which the members shall carry out their actions.
Article 49 states [the members of the United Nations shall join in affording mutual assistance in carrying out the measures decided upon by the Security Council.]This article said that members of the United Nations must provide the assistance necessary for the measures decided by the Security Council.
Article 50 states [if preventative or enforcement measures against any state are taken by the Security Council, any other state, whether a member of the united nations or not, which finds itself confronted with special economic problems arising from the carrying out of those measures shall have the right to consult the security council with regard to a solution of those problems.] This article is there to ensure no member is harmed too severely by the measures taken by the Security Council.
And the last article of this charter is article 51. [Nothing in the present charter shall impair the inherent right o individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the security council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the security council under the present charter to take at any time such actions as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.]This article defends the right to self-defence of any nation, as long as it does not conflict with the Security Council’s responsibilities.
We make a view for chapter 7 of the United Nations charter. Let us go to the beginning of the research, we will find that the decisions of the covenant league of nations is not binding for its members, and the reason is it does not have the power to carry out its decisions by force, because it lacks a military force like the united nations. And if we went to the title of the research we will find the term aggression. What did the charter mean by this word? Let us know the meaning so that our vision can be clearer. In 1974 the general assembly adopted a resolution on the definition of aggression which provided as follows in the first three articles.
Article 1) aggression is the use of armed force by a state against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another state or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations, as set out in this definition.
Article 2) the first use of armed force by a state in contravention of the Charter shall constitute prima facie evidence of an act of aggression although the Security Council may in conformity with the charter conclude that a determination that an act of aggression has been committed would not be justified in the light of other relevant circumstances including the fact that the acts concerned or their consequences are not of sufficient gravity.
Article 3) any of the following acts, regardless of a declaration of war, shall, subject to and in accordance with the provisions of article2, qualify as an act of aggression:
A) The invasion or attack by the armed forces of a state of the territory of another state, or any other military occupation, however temporary, resulting from such invasion or attack, or any annexation by the use of force of the territory of another state or pare thereof;
B) Bombardment by the armed forces of a state against the territory of another state or the use of any weapons by a state against the territory of another state ;
C) The blockade of the ports or coasts of a state by the armed forces of another state;
D) An attack by the armed forces of a state on the land, sea or air forces, marine and air fleets of another state;
E) The use of armed forces of one state, which are within the territory of another state with the agreement of the receiving state, in contravention of the conditions provided for in the agreement or any extension of their presence in such territory beyond the termination of the agreement;
F) The action of a state in allowing its territory , which it has placed at the disposal of another state, to be used by that other state for perpetrating an act of aggression against a third state;
G) The sending by or on behalf of a state of armed groups, irregulars or mercenaries, which carry out acts of armed forces against another state of such gravity as to amount to the acts listed above, or its substantial involvement therein.
After we have made general view in chapter 7 of the United Nations charter, and we know the conditions and requirements to the use of force if a state breaches or threatens the international peace and security. Let us see, have those articles been applied in cases from the past? And are they going to be applied in the future? The resolution 678 made by the security council authorized the use of force against Iraq by a group of states assisting Kuwait and acting by way of collective self-defence in accordance to article 51 of the charter. Such action has an independent legal basis in article 51 of the charter, and is particularly justifiable in the absence of stand-by United Nations forces. However, the grant of delegated powers by the Security Council may, and sometimes does, lead to the conferment of pseudo-legitimacy upon military operations which have political objectives unrelated to genuine peace keeping or enforcement action.
The United Nations said that Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. said that it would enter Iraq to destroy such weapons of mass destruction. What did the United Nations do? Thousands of people died during and after the invasion, and are dying until today and will probably die tomorrow. No one condemned the U.S.A for its actions. Why did the U.S.A enter Iraq? Did it have a reasonable claim for the right of self defence? Or if Iraq did indeed have weapons of mass destruction, would it be considered a threat to the international peace? If the answer is yes, why didn’t the U.S.A invade India, or Pakistan or even Israel? It seems obvious that there is no justification for the invasion of Iraq but self interest.
Let us consider the situation in Iran. Iran, till this moment, does not have nuclear weapons, and is only working on the passive use of nuclear energy. Yet all of the world stood up and sat down and a number of sanctions were imposed upon Iran. And the next step may be the usage of force. And again we have the examples of Pakistan and India. What makes it legal for those two countries to use nuclear energy, but keeps it illegal for Iran to do the same? The answer is simple; there is a problem of double standards. For the United States, the countries which follow its policies are better than the ones who do not.
If we consider the case of Rwanda, the genocide which occurred there is well known. Thousands died, and thousands were raped, and thousands more left the country after their homes were destroyed. Let us ask ourselves, how much time did all this take? Where was the United Nations while all this was happening? Was it waiting for the people to die before taking action? Why was chapter seven of the United Nations charter not applied? Does it mean it is purely ink on paper?
We all know the occupation of Palestine by the Israel people was in 1948, after the birth of the United Nations charter. Again the question arises, what did the United Nations do at that time, or will do at the time being. Nothing has been done. The Palestinian people are dying, and their land is being taken away from them, and the size of the Israeli colonies is growing. Is the United Nations waiting for the disappearance of the Palestinian state to take action? The person viewing the news knows that a few days ago a massacre happened in Gaza strip. Is this not considered aggression as defined by the general assembly? We all know the answer is yes. And we all know that because of mutual interests between the United States and Israel, that the United Nations cannot even incriminate the actions of the Israeli government. This is another example of double standards.
In Lebanon, there have been invasions by Israeli forces quite a few times, including the last one in 2006. Thousands died and as usual the United Nations failed to use chapter 7. I do not need to repeat myself that this is an example of double standards and aggression.
Let us see what has happened in North Korea. It built a nuclear reactor by the assistance of the Soviet Union, and that was in 1965. Later on, Korea built two other reactors and the United Nations didn’t know the real information about the Koreans nuclear power because the North Korean government did not want to cooperate with the United Nations. It hid the real information. But when the articles of the seventh chapter were applied properly, specifically the non-military action, the North Korean crisis was averted. This is a good example of the proper usage of the seventh chapter.
If we take what happened in Serbia as an example, we will find that the united nations used force under the united nations charter 1945(chapter 7) to stop the genocide and the criminals have been sent to the international court of justice and have been tried. This is another example of a successful usage of force by the United Nations.
I do not wish to criticize the United Nations charter, and I do not claim there is no international public law. But I wish that we would improve these laws. The main problem in these laws is double standards. We have mentioned many examples of this. My personal opinion is that this is derived from the imbalance of power across the globe. Also, the clause about self defence if rather vague, making it easy for countries to use it to further its own interests. The major problem is the right of veto. We cannot leave the fate of the world in the hands of five countries. Most of the situations in which the United Nations did not intervene are because one of the countries used its right of veto. The United States has interests in Israel; china has interest in third world countries. Each time a decision is made it will be cancelled because the one of these countries will use its right of veto.
Since we do not believe in the right of veto, what is the solution? The answer is to stop using the veto right. I know it sounds not logical for a lot of people to stop using this right, but if we want to ensure international peace and security, it must stop. Thus we ensure that the United Nations is independent, also ensuring that there is an independence of law. And the decisions in the Security Council must be by majority of the fifteen members and all the representatives of the other nations.
The dream which unites all the people of the world is international peace. No one likes to see people dying or the birth of new wars and the destruction of culture and environment of the world. I hope that the usage of power would be peaceful and rational and I hope that the world is peaceful in all its shapes. Our best chance to achieve this is the United Nations.

Could going solar ease the number of rape cases in Darfur?

With temperatures exceeding 50 degrees Celsius, one would expect the solar power cooking industry to spawn in areas such as Darfur.  Standard Solar panel cookers were once abundant in sub Sahara areas but were neglected due to high maintenance costs and inefficiency.   There’s a new method of solar cooking that I think is very efficient and could immensely benefit areas such as Darfur. That new method of cooking is with a Fresnel lens.

A Fresnel lens is a type of lens invented by French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel. Originally developed for lighthouses, the design enables the construction of lenses of large aperture and short focal length without the weight and volume of material which would be required in conventional lens design. Compared to earlier lenses, the Fresnel lens is much thinner, thus passing more light and allowing lighthouses to be visible over much longer distances. When placed in the sun, a Fresnel lens will act as a giant magnifying glass and concentrate light to a very small point.  Most large Fresnel lenses will concentrate several square feet of sunlight to less than an inch resulting in a hot spot over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. This will cause wood to instantly catch on fire or zinc and copper metal to melt in a few seconds or even burn and vaporize. With a Fresnel lens, one gallon of water was boiled in 30 minutes. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel_lens)

Fresnel lens cooker on a custom built stand

While I believe Fresnel lens cookers are environmentally friendly and convenient in many ways (less labor/time intensive than gathering wood), they’ve never quite caught on in areas such as Darfur despite having advantages in their favor:

a. They come in a kit, which means that they are standardized, and they are buildable (which increases ownership!), and they are transportable. To cut the cost of building a custom stand for the lens panel, enterprising people can take that into their own hands and build a stand on their own. This would cut the costs of manpower and assembly as only the lenses would be exported to the Darfurians by NGO organizations.

b. They come with specialized training and are easier to use than solar panel cookers.

c. Fresnel lens are very cheap in terms of cost. The cost of a giant 34 inch by 44 inch Fresnel lens is approximately 35 Dollars (from a manufacturer in British Columbia). Of course this price could  be cheaper when imported directly from Chinese manufacturers. The total Average cost of engineering the Fresnel lens into a custom built stand (including man power costs) would be approximately 50 dollars. Compare that with an average solar panel cooker that costs 200 dollars. A Fresnel lens cooker will take 2 minutes to cook what a solar panel cooker would take an hour to cook. A Fresnel lens would also take much less time to cook food than the typical fire wood method traditionally used by Darfurians.

d. Health and Environmental advantages. The World Health Organization reports that cooking with fire wood inside a hut is the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. Inhalation of smoke from cooking fires causes respiratory diseases and death. One of the solutions advocated to address this problem is solar cooking which makes no smoke at all. It just uses free and abundant solar energy.

e. MOST importantly, the security situation in Darfur is detoriating. The numbers of women raped are on the rise since African Union troops were forced to abandon “firewood patrols”, which once escorted them to the periphery of the camp to collect wood for fuel. By introducing Fresnel lens cookers, darfurian women would spend less time fetching for firewood and thus this would decrease their chances of getting raped.

Warning signs of Genocide. We ignored these signs in Rwanda, HOW DARE we ignore them again in Darfur.

We have always said never again whether it was Rwanda, Bosnia or certainly the holocaust, but the genocide in Darfur is happening now and it’s happening before our very eyes. In this paper, I want to explore the signs of genocide that I believe we as the people have despondently ignored.  As a Student,  my inquisitive mind   has led  me on a quest to further understand genocides in depth.    What I’ve  noticed from my analysis of genocides  is that there was a predictable sequence of events. Using that sequence, it could be very helpful to policy makers to prevent Genocide by seeing Genocide coming and knowing what steps could be taken at each of the signs to do something to stop it.

The first sign is classification. Now of course all human beings classify; there’s always us and there’s them, there’s our group and there’s the others. This is not necessarily of course a genocidal step, but its absolutely necessary for genocide because if we don’t have a way to say some people are “other” and they are not part of us, then there is no way you can have a Genocide. The way to counteract genocide at that very early stage is to appeal to transcendent identities, i.e. we are all Sudanese or Rwandans.

The second sign is symbolization, where we have words or symbols that express those classifications. We call people Tutsi or Hutus. The best way to counteract symbolization is when you see physical symbols being applied to groups,  e.g. Yellow pieces of cloth that the Taliban tried to put on Hindus in Afghanistan, you raise the human cry because that kind of symbolization is a pre cursor for genocidal activity. When you see people’s religion or other types of distinguishing identity that could be used for prosecution on their identity cards, you oppose that, i.e. you try and get that taken off the identity cards. In 1998 in Rwanda, they needed to take those ethnic identities off the identity cards of the Hutu’s and Tutsi’s, but of course it was too late.

The third sign is dehumanization. It’s  where we equate the group that is targeted as being a cancer or microbes in the system. In other words,  It’s where we begin to treat one group as somehow less than human. The way this is often expressed is using language for instance calling people vermin or cockroaches as they called the Tutsis in Rwanda. In Darfur, Western Sudan, non Arab Africans are often referred to as “zurga,” which translates as” Black” but is thought of more as a slur. When such dehumanizing words are used , you know you have a very serious dehumanization process going on in that society that has to be fought very vigorously.

The fourth sign of genocide is organization. If a hate group is formed that is organizing to carry out hate crimes, that group must be outlawed and the people who are part of that group need to be arrested because they are in fact engaging in essentially organized crime. That was the way the SS was treated in Nirenberg and it should have been  the way the Interhamway should have been treated in Rwanda.

The fifth sign of Genocide is Polarization, in which the hate groups try to drive the society apart. Basically they try to drive out all the moderates who could stop the process. The first people who are always attacked in every genocide are the people who are moderates who may oppose it. For instance, in Germany the first people to be arrested by Hitler were the Social democrats and liberals who were though to oppose the Nazi regime. These people are also bound to be the first people to be killed. Another example is in Rwanda where the Prime minister who was Hutu was among the first person to be killed on the first day of the genocide. Whenever there’s evidence of such  Polarization, you have to get international pressure to be put on the regime that is attempting to do that. Unfortunately, we are seeing this exact strategy being used in Iraq right now. On many sides of Iraq, Polarization is going on. As a matter of fact, in many cases what people call “ethnic cleansing” is actually very much pre genocidal type activity.

The sixth sign is what I call preparation. It is the stage were people are armed and  militias are trained to carry out  genocide. It’s also the stage at which even sometimes concentration camps are built. When such  kind of preparation is evident , the International community has to cry out. The leaders of that kind of “massacre preparation” need to have sanctions placed upon them as individuals. It must become impossible for them to travel and they need to have their finances frozen. They basically need to become International outlaws.

The seventh sign is what I call Genocide, “legally”. The reason why I use this term is because the people who commit Genocide are very frequently people who believe what they are doing is good for their Society. They actually think that they are purifying their society. The Nazi’s for instance thought that by eliminating the Jews from Europe, it was going to actually make a better Europe. The Soviet Union thought that by eliminating class enemies, they would be able to create a perfect society… a classless society. In Rwanda the thought was, if we could just get rid of all these Tutsi’s, then we would have a perfect Hutu run country. I am convinced that at the point where Genocide is actually going on, so much international pressure has to be placed on the Government to stop it . Unfortunately the international community does not yet have the standing police forces and international army to do that kind of intervention, so probably the most common type on intervention at this point is going to be by regional organizations, i.e. by NATO, ECOWAS (The Economic Community of West African States) and other groups of that kind that can in fact intervene to actually bring a halt to Genocide. That was what happened for instance in Sierra Leone and in Liberia.

There is a strange and unusual 8th sign of every of Genocide. When I first realized that there was this 8th sign, I thought to myself whether this was quite the same thing because it actually begins all the way right from the beginning. The eighth sign is denial. All the way through this whole process, the people who are committing Genocide Deny that they are doing it. They will lie, they will dissimulate and  do what the Sudanese UN Ambassador, Abdalmahmood Mohamed just did in Washington…he actually said that genocide isn’t happening in Darfur. I mean he completely denied the facts and found other sorts of excuses for denial. What’s amazing about denial is that unless there are actual trials and courts that can bring to Justice the people who have committed the genocide, the denial can last for 100 years. That’s still what’s going on for example with the Armenian genocide and the Turkish authorities are still denying that it was actually genocide.

So those are the eight signs of Genocide and what I’m convinced is that at each of the signs, there are steps that can be taken to halt this deadly process. In Darfur, each of these signs is evident. The classification is the population by the Sudanese authorities who are Arab looking Darfurians who consider themselves lighter skinned and a superior race  and the Black non Arab Darfurians… basically the people who are blacker and belong to the Fur, Massalit, and Zanghawa tribes. The classification in Darfur is not one that was imposed by the perpetrators, but it was always there in the past in  society. The only difference now is the murderous kind of classification that we are seeing now that wasent there in the past.

The symbolization of course is the kind of symbolization you get when for example  a  Janjaweed soldier  utters  to  a Darfurian woman, “I’m raping you so that you will  have  lighter skinned child “. It’s basically  this symbolization of race. Of course with that you have dehumanizing words where Darfurians are called “Abid” (slaves) by the Arab leaders. They are basically considered to be properly in the state of slavery in society. That part of dehumanization is apart of this genocide.

The organization has been one where the Sudanese Government has given arms and the spoils of pillage to the Janjaweed Militias. Instead of using the Sudanese army directly in most of these raids, although they are partially  involved (the Sudanese army is involved … they do use tanks and missile shooting helicopters and so forth), the Janjaweed are essentially the local policing militia who ride on horsebacks and carry out most of the murders. So that’s the form of organization in this genocide.
The Polarization is very clear. What the Janjawed are attempting to do is drive all of the Black non Arab darfurians into internally displaced persons camps, where they can be separated. There’s  also the systematic killing of any moderate Arab Darfurians who stands  in their way. Local tribal chiefs are even not allowed to govern as they are supposed to do.

The preparation stage was one in which the Sudanese Government had already committed multiple genocides in other places. It was a well practiced genocidal regime having already committed Genocide in the Nuba Mountains in 1992 and In the South for over 20 years, where over 2 million people died. The preparation in Darfur had been one which they had systematic prosecutions and discrimination against Black non Arab darfurians. When the darfurians demanded their rights with rebel movements formed, at that point the whole situation moved into sign 7…”actual genocide”. That’s when the Sudanese air force started bombing villages and helicopter gunships came in and strafed the villages, with the janjaweed militia following up later to murder and rape the rest of the live civilians. This is genocide. People can argue all they want about whether the term Genocide aught to be applied in this case, frankly I don’t really care whether it’s genocide or politiside or crimes against humanity, the point is PEOPLE ARE BEING MURDERED. In my own view, there is so much evidence of specific intent by the Sudanese Government in initiating genocide. The Sudanese Government does not need to have orders that are written down somewhere that says” Go out there and kill all the black non Arab darfurians”, although apparently such orders have been given and there are witnesses willing to testify to that. In fact one of the major human rights organizations came up with papers that they had found in Khartoum that shows direct connection form the Sudanese government to the janjaweed and to this genocide.

Denial has been going on from the beginning. The Sudanese Government has been denying their responsibility in the initiation of the genocide. They use excuses such as ” oh its a tribal conflict “, or ” oh dont worry it’s just a conflict between pastoralist and farmers.” In other words its ancient enmities. I believe that’s absolutely false and pathetic at the same time; I mean common,  these people have lived together for hundreds of years and they have never committed genocide against each other. That has not happened until 2003. Another maneuver  the sudanese government uses in denial  is to minimize the statistics. They claim that it’s just a few thousands of people that have died, when in fact it’s more like 400,000 people that have died. They will even sometimes blankly deny that anything is going wrong at all, such as the Sudanese UN ambassador’s speech in Washington to the national press club. There was this marvelous article on the Washington post that shows how ridiculous in fact his arguments were. The article even goes further and states that the Sudanese UN Ambassador Abdalmahmood Mohamed  is an embarrassment to Sudan  because of his severe lack of knowledge in international affairs. Anyway, you also have denial in the form of what could be called the “how could you point your fingers at us when you are doing bad things in Iraq “argument. It’s the clean hands doctrine that is often used in international law. Now of course it’s no defense against the Sudanese crimes against genocide. Whatever bad thing that the United States government has done at one time is no defense for the Sudanese government to be committing genocide against its own people.

All of the types of denial are very evident in Darfur, now of course the question is” what can we now do”. I am convinced that there has to be first of all an increase in peacemaking,  it has to be placed much higher in the priority of the United States government as well as other major powers around the world. We have to get china involved in this as well as France. Having a common objective and pushing the Sudanese government towards ending this, like the US did in the South of Sudan is very essential. Secondly I think there has to be protection for the civilians of Darfur. We have to keep up the humanitarian relief effort as much as we can. We also have to cry out when UN and AU forces are murder but we also have to cry out when people are murdered from Darfur. That has to be put in the news every night if it’s possible. The best right now that’s doing that is BBC news. The third and last thing that is needed is PUNISHMENT. The people who are committing these crimes need to be told in uncertain terms that they will be punished. The referral by the UN Security Council to the International Criminal court was a major step forward in that effort because genocide is expect impunity, if you can stop the expectation of impunity, you have gone some distance towards keeping people (Omar al-Bashir and some members of his Government) from continuing their crimes.

World Trade Organization (WTO) Political Divide

The trade system has got much more complex by the lack of democracy, transparency and accountability. World trade now has a series of major actors in it other than simply North America and Western Europe. The developing world has become much more disaggregated than it was by the brutal power politics and arm-twisting of the WTO. The WTO isn’t serving to its purpose of opening up markets around the world in the name of free trade by catering to the interests of a much wider range of actors, not only the big players but also the smaller players. There is also an important issue of justice for the poorer countries. Agriculture remains a major problem, even though it’s not a significant element of world trade, it’s politically very important and it’s an area that affects the smallest and weakest countries more than any others. Bringing a resolution to these kinds of problems in a just and fare way is difficult and it’s a matter of Politics not just Economics. As a matter of fact, if you talk to politicians in any of the countries that are major players in the system, they will all say to a person that “yes” they know multilateralism is the first best option to ensure free trade and “yes” they know how important it is but they spend much more time and energy looking for the next bilateral trade to negotiate. I personally think that if that problem can be addressed and that perhaps is the most intractable of the problems, then the system may be well down the path for reinventing its importance, relevance and legitimacy.

Is the arrest and detention of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Russia abhorrent to common sense, rule of law and any standard of decency?

There is so much in the criminal system and in the civil system when it comes to politically sensitive cases which take you back to some of the worst days, even to some extent to Stalin. The Khodorkovsky trial was a classic show trial. A show trial defines itself in a number of ways. One of which is that it has absolutely very little to do with he reality of law and everything to do with the appearance of law. It is in fact the fiatrics of show trial that are incredibly important. The appearance of a court, the legitimizing nature of an adversarial system, is something that seemed to be lacking and thus unjust in the Khodorkovsky case. What also seemed to be unjust unfortunately was the scenario whereby Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky was taken to court everyday as if he was the brother of Osama Bin laden, literally in chains, with special troops bringing him strapped….his jeans soaked in urine because he had been kept without facilities for hours and hours, having missed breakfast and eventually also been brought back too late to have dinner. He was brought into court, put into a cage, sat into a bench which was 5 inches wide and uncomfortably made to seat there through the entire day of absolutely surreal proceedings. And then at the end of the day, and this was everyday, the photographers would come in at the 11th hour to take his picture, in attempt to break him. And I don’t know if you people saw the emblematic photo of him smiling through the cage in the internet, but it was an incredible measure of the man, that through this whole period he never broke. When they made his father who was an elderly gentleman, a lovely gentleman, a man who had dedicated himself after working under 40 years of a factory to build an Orphanage, when they made his father on Russian television appear to be involved in a murder, attempting to sell to the public on the idea that the father was a criminal such as the son, it was the only time that he showed the hint of emotion as he attempted to communicate something to his father. So the trial, when you are talking about this kind of “show trial” the message to everyone was that if we can get Khodorkovsky, we can get anyone. The intent was not to anyway demonstrate due process, just the reverse, the intent was to demonstrate the impunity of the power. And to develop that impunity Khodorkovsky had to be taken down. He was in Puttins’ mind an alternative centre, a magnet around which opposition could congeal. Remember the timing of his arrest, just before the elections.

There’s NO DOUBT that the Sudanese Government uses and supports the Janjawid in Darfur

Despite the confessions given by some “Janjawid” ex- soldiers, the government of Sudan continues to deny the evidence of its support to the Janjawid in Darfur, which continue to carry out grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law with impunity. In August 2004, Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail stated during a television appearance that the UN exaggerated the number of those who had died by 10 times; there were no more than 4000 and he challenged the UN to “”tell us their names or show us their graves”". In the same television programme, when asked why the government had not arrested alleged leaders of the Janjawid, including Musa Hilal, said to be leader of the Janjawid and a colonel in the Sudanese army, he answered: “”Because we don’t have anything. Nobody has come up with specific allegations against this very Musa Hilal … We are talking about human rights. We can not just apprehend anybody or sentence him just on allegations.” (3)

A wide gap exists between the Sudanese government’s statements and the reality they claim to depict. Just recently, one Janjaweed leader who fled to Britain overtly told a BBC reporter that he and about 20 other youths from his area rode off on their camels to a training camp near the town of Kebkabiya, where they joined hundreds of other Janjawid recruits. In his testimonial, the Ex- soldier mentions that uniformed Sudanese soldiers spent about 20 days teaching them how to use guns and attack villages. He and other “janjawid” soldiers with camels were separated from those with horses. They were organized into battalions of more than 500 men each and paid two million Sudanese pounds, roughly $1000 for the use of their camels and promised a monthly salary of 500,000 Sudanese pounds. In the interview the ex- soldier continues to mention how his commander told him that the Government wanted all the villages Burnt and everyone killed. He even explains how sometimes they used satellite telephones to request air strikes by the Sudanese military helicopters before attacking. The  ex soldier expressed that he felt no elation during or after the attacks. He and his colleagues did not even know what they were fighting for, but faced execution if they disobeyed orders.

The direct relationship between the Janjawid and the government of Sudan can also be evidenced by the number of government statements showing that the involvement of Janjawid fighters was planned from the beginning of the Darfur conflict. This is plainly stated by President Omar al Bashir in a speech in December 2003:

“We will use the army, the police, the mujahidin, the fursan to get rid of the rebellion.”[The mujahidin is the name usually given to the People's Defence Forces and fursan, ""horsemen"" is the name given by the Janjawid to themselves].(5)

Below is the testimonial from an ex- soldier of the Janjawid given to a BBC reporter.

(3) Ali Osman: 9 August 2004, Sudanese First Vice-President, Ali Osman Taha in an interview in the BBC television programme Hard Talk.

(5) “Sudanese president says war against outlaws is government priority”, Associated Press, 31 December 2003

Innovations for Poverty Action – How Micro-finance Works

Ever since micro-finance was introduced, there have been lots of assumptions about what it accomplishes for the poor: Micro-loans alleviate poverty; they allow poor people (especially women) to start businesses and become financially self-sufficient; they correlate with increased spending on education for children and health care, etc. Allot of people may be wondering how Micro-Credit works, well it initially works by the formation of a group – basically any charity makes loans to groups of 10-18 women, who join together (by choice) to form a loan group. Each group then elects their own Chairman, Treasurer and Secretary. The group then receives training- A training sessions would include basic business skills such as book keeping, cash flow management and effective organization. Each group also receives an appraisal of their business idea. Individuals in the group receive the Loan – Each member is required to save money as a source of security (like making a deposit against a mortgage). Then, each woman receives her loan in the form of a cheque and opens a bank account at the designated bank. Individuals set up Businesses – The women establish small commercial ventures such as farming, fishing or market trading. And finally the group repays the loans collectively – Repayments against loans are made every two weeks by each group member. The Loan Officer counts and checks the money with the Treasurer, who then deposits the repayment in the bank, leaving a copy of the receipt at the charity’s local branch office. Where a business is not going well, it is the responsibility of the Loan Officer is able to help get things back on track.

Below is an extrapt video on Muhammad Yunus: Creating a Poverty-Free World – one of 16 DVDs created by Ashoka’s Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship. Dr. Yunus, recently awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, offers his insights into what is required to eradicate global poverty. Yunus envisions a new kind of capitalism, and demonstrates how his organizations, the Grameen Bank and the Grameen Family of Companies, offer viable solutions to the challenge of pervasive poverty.

Sudanese Civil Societies and their struggle to promote democratic activitiess

Democracy cannot and will never be practiced in the form of a “Dictatorship of the majority” as many people believe. The only way a democracy will ever work in Sudan is if we see a greater role played by our Sudanese civil society organizations in actually promoting democratic activities. Genuine Democracy does not rely on a “Dictatorship of the majority” but rather on a complex, multi-layered web of civic organizations for a number of its most basic functions. As sad as it seems, the Bashir government regards such organizations as competing structures of power, and deliberately and systematically undermines them. The organizations that give form to and empower individual initiative are gradually destroyed or prevented from emerging in the first place, leaving citizens atomized and powerless before the authority of the state. An example would be an instance that occurred in 1995. During that year, a so called notorious “ghost house” located near the Citibank branch near Khartoum was used to torture dissidents; most f them members of civil organizations that were trying to promote a rule of equality and fairness in Sudan. Bashir didn’t rest on his lards, but went further and implemented a new law in 1995 that was rapidly applied to detain arbitrarily the former prime minister and leader of the banned Umma Party and the Ansar sect on which it is based, Sadiq al Mahdi, on account of a speech he gave during the religious holiday “Eid” in which he criticized the government.

The violation of Sadiq al Mahdi’s right to free expression was followed a week later by mass detentions of other Umma Party leaders. These detainees were released, never having been charged, in August; the time the prisoners spent in detention appeared designed to remind the party, its leader, and Sudanese civil organizations that there was a certain “red line” beyond which criticism would not be tolerated. The core idea that I am trying to bring about is that in Sudan we seem to have this chaotic fringe where the Government and civil society organizations seemed to be locked up in a pathological decay thus preventing the blossoming of democracy. Because of such it will be tough for democracy to be achieved but an undisguised instrument of oppression will surely be achieved.

Allot of people may be wondering how civil organizations can aid in restoring Genuine democracy in Sudan, well  to answer this question we have to understand the importance of the governance-civil organization nexus. That connection is very important but somehow never met. You may ask why? Well, the support from the majority of the Sudanese people to stand behind a dictator could be the answer. The majority support for a dictator  deliberately and systematically undermines the order to stamp out alternative structures of power and resistance. In such a case, society cannot perform the complex, decentralized tasks necessary to a democratic governance.

How Sudanese Businesses Can Aid in the Fight against Poverty?

Statistics on poverty are as easy to find as they are numbing: with hard climate conditions and lack of natural resources, Sudan is left to bare with poor life conditions. AIDS alone killed 29000 Sudanese in 2007 and contraction rates continue to climb; more than 700,000 Sudanese people lack access to clean water; 46.1% of total population is literate. These statistics present two problems: First, they make the problem of poverty, disease and hunger impersonal; second, the scale is too vast to comprehend. How can we come to terms with thousands of people suffering each day from hunger? The problems seem insurmountable with the result that people feel incapable of doing anything about them. Such difficulties are often compounded by reported accounts of failed aid projects or the theft of funds by corrupt government leaders. In view of  such difficulties,  it is impossible to escape the conclusion that tackling poverty is a responsibility for every concerned individual whether Sudanese or not.

Micro-finance has shown the way forward in removing people from abject poverty to ‘normal’ poverty. The next step is increased investment through small and medium-sized companies in poor countries which yields both financial and social returns. The way forward consists of a number of steps.

First, encourage foundations, trusts and companies through their social responsibility budgets to invest in social venture capital projects instead of simply making charitable donations. Second, encourage governments to devote a greater proportion of their aid budgets to funding enterprise and design tax policies that promote social venture investments.

In conclusion, there are no easy answers to the eradication of poverty. There is no ‘one size fits all’ or a single solution. Poverty will ultimately be solved when good governments are installed that will create the environment for vibrant economic activity to take place. It will not be solved by grand projects run by governments but which offer poor returns on their investments. An enterprise-based strategy will lay the groundwork for a better educated and resourced next generation, to transform their nations and make poverty history.

The Sudanese Communist party and its Separation of Religion From Politics

It’s no secret that the Sudanese communist party chooses to separate religion from their political policies. I believe that their separation of religion from politics is the right way to steer to democracy but on the other hand it may seem to be a big disadvantage to the party especially when a majority of Sudanese have a tendency to support religious political parties as opposed to the contrary. We all have to accept that in order for Sudan to become a democratic country, religion should be kept separate from the government. Religion and democracy are only compatible with each other if both function in their well defined separate spheres i.e. religion as a spiritual force and democracy as a political one.

In Sudan we have seen serious problems arise when religion transgresses its limits to get in the way with politics and democracy transgresses its limits to use religion for political ends. Religion should be used for spiritual growth, while democracy to address the problems affecting the people and solve their concerns in a democratic manner. Don’t get me wrong, democracy can benefit from the teachings of religion in a positive sense. What I meant by that is that democracy can introduce into itself the moral values provided by religion… moral values that would be essential to any great democratic leader. The sad reality in Sudan is that many political parties seem to use forceful majoritarianism to strengthen their religious based identity and mobilization among the minority communities.

The foundation of democracy is sadly weakened through this process and religion becomes a powerful source of political mobilization amongst the majority as well as minority communities. This is an appalling way to come to rule because religion becomes more and more sectarian rather than spiritual and the foundation of democracy is weakened. In the end of the day the ordinary citizens become the losers of such a rule. I just hope people will come to understand the significant difference of religion as a faith and religion as a political belief.